World News Quick Take

Agencies

INDONESIA

Komodo dragon attacks two

A park official says two people have been hospitalized after being attacked by a giant Komodo dragon that wandered into the office of a wildlife park. An official at Komodo National Park, Heru Rudiharto, said on Wednesday that the 2m long Komodo dragon attacked a park ranger after walking into the office on Tuesday. It then attacked another park employee who came to help him. Both were badly bitten and were evacuated to a hospital on Bali. Rudiharto said the park ranger had also been attacked by a Komodo dragon in 2009.

SOUTH KOREA

Seoul targets taxi cheats

The Seoul City Government is offering a cash reward of 500,000 won (US$460) to anyone informing the authorities about taxi drivers who rip off foreign tourists. City officials said yesterday that the move was an attempt to curb a practice that is “still rampant,” despite previous crackdown efforts. Government official Kim Su-jeong said foreigners ripped off by taxi drivers could claim the reward themselves by calling an English-language hotline and reporting the driver. “Many taxi drivers unduly demand extra charges or do not use the taxi fare calculators in order to exact unfair charges from foreigners,” Kim said.

NEW ZEALAND

Xena hails ‘great victory’

Xena: Warrior Princess actor Lucy Lawless says she has won a “great victory” after a judge handed her a modest sentence, but declined to order costs sought by oil company Shell for her role in a protest aboard an oil-drilling ship. Lawless and seven other Greenpeace activists were yesterday each ordered to pay NZ$651 (US$547) costs to a port company and complete 120 hours of community service after earlier pleading guilty to trespass charges. In February last year, the activists climbed a drilling tower on the Arctic-bound vessel Noble Discoverer to protest oil exploration in the Arctic.

BELGIUM

Chocolate stamps unveiled

The post office has launched a new stamp sure to delight chocoholics around the world. “We have added a chocolate taste to the glue of the stamps ... which you can taste when you lick it,” the postal service said. “The stamps are also imbued with the smell,” it said, while the design side carries pictures of chocolate in various forms. “It was not easy to get the scent and flavor of the dark chocolate right. In the end, people from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland all worked on it,” it said.

GERMANY

Teen handed job in brothel

A teenager looking for a job was told to report for duty in a brothel by the local labor office, the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Wednesday. The 19-year-old woman said she was horrified when she opened a job placement letter from the German Labor Office in Augsburg on Saturday informing her that it had lined up a waitressing job for her at the Augsburg Colosseum brothel. “I was looking for a decent housekeeping job — not working at a brothel bar,” the woman told the newspaper. “I was totally shocked when I read the letter. My mother even started screaming out loud when she read the letter.” The head of the Augsburg labor office, Roland Fuerst, said that the agency had made a mistake, even though it knew the Colosseum was a brothel. He said that the agency should have first called the woman to check to see if she might be interested in the brothel job, rather than simply sending her a letter.